April 30, 2017

This weeks assignment was to tell a story with a map. Seeing how the NFL draft just happened, I chose to use that event to as my "story".

I worked really hard on this one, and had several different things going on here. First I chose to go with a choropleth map, which color coded each state ranked by number of draftees per state, which varied from 0 - 4. I also labeled that number in the middle of the state. I then found the college helmets of each school that had a player drafted, and labeled the players name next to the helmet. The best way to do this to make it look good was to make a white circle around the helmet. This is due to the limitations with ArcGIS. Lastly I listed the players on a table on the map.

who is Ryan?

In 2014 upon moving to the Deep South from California, I noticed a lot of new things while driving around. The one thing that really stuck out more than anything though was how inefficient the street lights were. More than just a nuisance, the street light infrastructure was in need of a colossal overhaul.

So why did the incompetent street lights bug me so much? Soon I realized the answer to this was that they both were completely inefficient and had poor design.

Bingo!

I love design, and I strive to make my life as efficient as possible. This is my calling! I found out the name of the occupation that is in charge of this is transportation planning. Great! But somehow I couldn’t see myself embarking on a career without a strong technology component.

Enter geographic information systems, otherwise known as GIS! It’s the perfect blend of science, art, & technology. GIS is essential to not only transportation planners, but also to a broad range of other professions too. This blog is a record of my journey to to go from beginner to GIS graduate!